"MODERN ART."

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 161, 9 July 1926, Page 8

"MODERN ART."

NEW SENSATIONS.

BY LOCAL "ARTISTS."

Those people •who went last year to the, annual dance of the pupils of the Elam School of Art will remember the Cubist and Futurist inspirations which adorned the walls of the Society of Arta Hall in Kitchener Street, usually hung with such conventional (or unconventional) efforts as fall from the brushes of Dominion artists who find favour with the hanging people. Remembering last year's efforts, then, it is difficult to say whether the sensations that patrons of to-night's dance will see are better or worse than their predecessors. Probably the students responsible will feel more pleased if one says "worse," for there is ample evidence of an attempt to out-herod Herod. The Echeme on this occasion has its basis in a good old country fair, but the imaginative people responsible have conceived and created a kind of brought on, perhaps, by too many turns on the comical round-about on one end of the hall. Every section of the fair is depicted, including a Punch and Judy show (with apologies to those two characters), a circus, various side show?, a wax work?, and a picnic party under the trees. Unless one is well versed in this "modern art' one must not try to pirk nut the "best." Attention, however, will be focus?ed on the wax works, whore a revised edition of Dick Turpin rubs shoulders with a cannibal king. There are other equally interesting and cleverly mutilated people in the group. The picnic party is a gem. while the animals which appear in some of the scene* have pedigrees all their own. The combined oiTcct is certainly "striking." fnr the brushes which, however reluctantly, did the work, were big, and the painr was of shrieking tinges. Xor was it Bparml. as was evidenced by one young , Indy. who was this morning putting the finishing touches to her canvas and had, as a palette, a benzine tin. On the stair 3 leading to the hall is a representation of the students "going over' to the University, and an angular impression that might be anything is in the hall below. Xo doubt the exhibition is another example of -'art for art's sake." That expression covers a multitude of sins.